Does God Bless America?

It's Their War, why aren't they fighting it? Operation Yellow Elephant

If there really was an all-powerful god capable of knowing the future and passing on that information to people, even if only a handful of wide-eyed beardies within a chosen race, it would be totally obvious. But it isn't. The people who do well on average are those who live in countries with big markets which respect knowledge and allow private property. Yes, America is a successful economy and Christian, but the Christianity is coincidental. America is great despite being pious, superstitious and God-fearing, not because of it.

Japan is an excellent model for how important Christianity is to a modern successful country. Japan deliberately imported those things in the outside world that she decided were worth having and left behind whatever was unnecessary or not helpful. Mass production, widespread education, especially in engineering and free enterprise were readily adopted. After the defeat in World War II the process continued. Democracy and liberalism were introduced and corruption and the antiquated feudal class system was rooted out. Japan grew wealthy and successful and did so with far less poverty and inequality than America. Japan is an object lesson in the values of secular liberal economies and societies. The Japanese are richer, healthier and happier than Americans despite living in a smaller country with much less in the way of natural resources. But Japan did not embrace Christianity along with the western values, western art and western food. That fact surely is very telling. Japan is great in the same way that America is great, but Japan has not embraced Jesus. If Japan can be great without the blessing of God why do Americans think that God's blessing is so important to them?

To be fair Japan's greatness is not nowadays military greatness whilst America's still is and more so than ever, but that is surely down to Japan being unable to conquer a bigger power and then stepping away from the contest. * It has nothing to do with Japan's willingness to fight or any other issue of character, resolve or willpower. Japan failed to subdue America because America was bigger, richer, with more advanced technology. Jesus didn't win the war, millions of Americans fighting, working and innovating did. I did consider adding the word dying there, but that would be silly, millions of Americans haven't died for their country. Making the other people die for their country, that is America's way of fighting wars, which makes perfect sense I suppose.

“The object of war is not to die for your country
but to make the other bastard die for his.”

- General George Patton

Christianity has been successfully exported to Africa and Latin America. Liberal values, freedom from corruption, free markets and so on have been much less successfully transplanted there. The results are clear. Christianity didn't help Europe out of the Dark Ages and probably started them off in the first place, in Africa Christianity has been similarly spectacularly unsuccessful at creating modern thriving nations. Nigeria is one of the most pious nations on the planet, it certainly has an extremely low incidence of secularity and atheism, but it is not the powerhouse of African prosperity. If it really was Christianity and the Protestant work ethic that made America great then surely today it would be Nigeria that was opening car factories in Southern Baptist country and the poor heathen Japanese who were trying to con you with tales of handling the ill-gotten gains of warlords. Not so. Now why is that? Perhaps, just perhaps, we should stop listening to the special pleadings of those suffering with the disease of faith and we should look to the simple facts. Countries do well if they have free access to large markets, educated workforces, open democratic governments and a lack of the stifling hands of either bureaucracy or theocracy. America is great because there are 300 million people mostly speaking one of two widespread languages shared by millions more worldwide. It is a nation with a huge land area, rich in oil, coal and metals. America produces more oil than any other nation could consume. America is a country with much less corruption than the average for our shifty untrustworthy species, and a government that ensures that people can do business. The greatness of America has nothing whatever to do with God.

The simplistic idea that God is blessing America is only going to convince those who use faith to square the circle and make reality fit with their religious theory.

Americans, stop beating yourselves up. It is YOU who are great. Not your imaginary god. Not your faith in another tribe's tribal genocidal deity. The corollary of that is that there is no destiny for America, manifest or otherwise. There is no reason to expect America to continue to be great for ever. America has no duty to be great. On the other hand starting from number one and with all the innate advantages of a monoglot continental sized country America has there is little reason to expect her to slide down the world league table as fast as say Spain, Judea or Carthage did. In fact short of a major disaster such as nuclear war or the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano there is only one way in which America could stop being a great (as opposed to the hyper) power, and that is to retreat into a self-created Dark Age of creationist Rapture-Ready theocracy.

* If you can't win the competition isn't really important, that's the attitude of the boy dropped from the football team, the girl who can't piss as high up the wall as her brother and the redneck who done not got no education. In contrast if you're winning then whatever you're winning at has to be really important, until you wake up one morning and find out you can't do it any more, then you are lost. Maybe one day soon America will wake up and discover that being good at destroying the armies of tin pot tyrants and failing to win over their people and so ending up murdering them in vast numbers isn't really anything to be proud about. Perhaps when that day arrives America will grow up.

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